The present invention relates generally to the field of cloud computing, and more particularly to the field of virtual server management within a cloud computing environment.
Cloud computing is known. Cloud computing is the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices as a utility over a network (typically the Internet). An enabling technology for cloud computing is virtualization. Virtualization software allows a physical computing device to be electronically separated into one or more “virtual” devices, each of which can be easily used and managed to perform computing tasks. By using virtualization to essentially create a scalable system of multiple independent computing devices, physical computing devices can allocate and use computing resources more efficiently. Virtualization provides the agility required to speed up IT operations, and reduces cost by increasing infrastructure utilization.
Data center management is known. Data center management is the management of the storage, servers, and switches located within a data center. Although data center management may be performed by individuals (for example, data center managers), many data center management functions may also be performed by data center management solution software. One kind of known functionality provided by data center management solutions is the relocation of virtual servers/machines from one physical server to another.